Two weeks ago, the paper published the names and addresses of handgun permit holders — a total of 33,614 — in two suburban counties, Westchester and Rockland, and put maps of their locations online. The maps, which appeared with the article “The Gun Owner Next Door: What You Don’t Know About the Weapons in Your Neighborhood”…..

The right to self-defense is paramount in the US. Apparently, totalitarian nuts like Hasson, don’t agree. So, she put names, addresses, and maps, to gun owner homes in a two county area. Clearly, the purpose of printing such is to subject the gun owners to forms of harassment for exercising their rights.

But the article, which left gun owners feeling vulnerable to harassment or break-ins, also drew outrage from across the country.

Strange how people react when they’re targeted for harassment.

Personal information about editors and writers at the paper has been posted online, including their home addresses and information about where their children attended school;

Oh, the horrors!!! Shocking that people would do that!! Some of the alleged behavior seems to have turned ugly.

[S]ome reporters have received notes saying they would be shot on the way to their cars; bloggers have encouraged people to steal credit card information of Journal News employees; and two packages containing white powder have been sent to the newsroom and a third to a reporter’s home (all were tested by the police and proved to be harmless).

Now, I’m fairly skeptical of claims such as these. We all recall the leftist totalitarian eco-nuts, and their claims about being threatened. Those turned out to be total bullshit. OTOH, when people are targeted for harassment and violence, some people will react in kind. Women have purchased guns and moved to get away from people who have committed violence against them. Prison guards have been threatened by criminals, now that they know where they live….. they already know the shifts they work. The newspaper either didn’t consider or simply didn’t care about such things. In their mind, they were exercising their first amendment rights. (Although, one can make the argument one could reasonably believe this is depraved indifference to the violence the paper is encouraging by publishing names, addresses and maps.)

“As journalists, we are prepared for criticism,” Ms. Hasson said, as she sat in her meticulously tended office and described the ways her 225 employees have been harassed since the article was published. “But in the U.S., journalists should not be threatened.” She has paid for staff members who do not feel safe in their homes to stay at hotels, offered guards to walk employees to their cars, encouraged employees to change their home telephone numbers and has been coordinating with the local police.

So, journalists shouldn’t feel threatened? What about private citizens exercising their constitutional rights? What about the poor women trying to escape violence? What about the prison guards? Maybe journalists shouldn’t target law abiding citizens for their totalitarian ideological agenda. Which, btw, political advocacy probably doesn’t rise to journalism any more than my blogging does. They don’t feel safe in their homes? I’m crying my heart out.

“The Journal News, I personally think, should have rethought the idea as actually going so far to identify actual addresses,” said Steve Doig, a professor with an expertise in data journalism at Arizona State. “This particular database ought to remain a public record. Just because it’s available and public record doesn’t mean we have to make it so readily available.”

Mr. Worley [the idiot reporter who thought this was a good idea] disagrees. “The people have as much of a right to know who owns guns in their communities as gun owners have to own weapons,” he said.

Do you see the lack of rationale and ability to think? No, they don’t have as much of a right. The gun owners have a constitutionally protected right to own a gun. There is no constitutionally protected right to know who owns a gun. Are all totalitarian leftists this stupid? [rhetorical]

The Journal News’s features editor, Mary Dolan said, “It sparked a conversation that needed to occur in this country, and it revealed tactics that will be employed when gun owners feel their rights are threatened”. —— Yes, the same tactics employed when nutters threaten gun owner rights.

At the same time, Ms. Hasson has been trying to calm the nerves of her family after photographs of the home she is renting and references to her adult children were put online.

“They are concerned about my safety,” she said about her children. “But they are very supportive.”

But, here’s the absolute best part of the story.

Calls and e-mails grew so threatening that the paper’s president and publisher, Janet Hasson, hired armed guards to monitor the newspaper’s headquarters in White Plains and its bureau in West Nyack, N.Y.

So, in an effort to secure herself and safety, she’s turned to firearms for protection. I suppose she believes it should be different for the little people.

I’m wondering. Were the armed guards’ addresses published?

This blog in no manner advocates, nor condones acts of violence against the duplicitous and hypocritical totalitarian nutters who were part of printing the insidious attack on peaceful, law abiding citizens.

It has prompted a proposal for legislation in this state. The want to limit the FOIA to exclude all private information on citizens (addresses, phone numbers and any other identifying information). If nothing else, that is a good thing.

Roll Tide Roll. James, you should know that when you play Alabama, you might get blown out, you might win big, or you might have Ara Parseghian vs Bear Bryant (most of the time you’ll get blown out or have a classic). Nick Saban has done something Bear Bryant never did. His team blew out Notre Dame. In a way, I was pleasantly surprised.

They were in it because of luck. They did not lose. They do play a tough schedule, and just had the fortune to not play any teams that were on the top of their game this year. So they were undefeated. But definitely not on the level of Bama.

Indeed. It seems to me that the things ‘liberals’ always seem to overlook are human nature and the consequences of human nature. You cannot overturn the laws of economics any more that you can the laws of physics, in the real world.

Law enforcement is only for the friends and relatives of those chosen by a continuous study that supplies a force that will feed the non-stop folly for their political agendas.

A neighbor recently informed me that several people were stopping nearby, entering a home, staying about 15 minutes and leaving. After picking up trash, alcohol bottles and such I determined they were from the state university located in a town some distance north of me. Must be a study going on and someone had a great deal on cliff notes or something I surmised.

But, why tell me? Why not send a woman over there to shoot him and give him a copy of “Shawdow Government” to let him know who is reporting back to whom.

He works for a New York banker and I am certain no one could give a rat’s azz as the Zombies from the south have already been damaging a new fence nearby and punching holes in mailboxes.

The journalists and “intelligent gathers” both operate at the same level…who is doing what in your neighborhood? Tell us! We’ll fix it!

Some East Indian guy asked the age old question: Can’t we all just get along?
After they carted him to the morgue there was a silent answer: Apparently not.